(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for controlling a driving mode of a vehicle. More particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for controlling a driving mode of a vehicle that controls the driving mode based on a short term driving tendency and a long term driving tendency of a driver.
(b) Description of the Related Art
Customer satisfaction of driving performance of a vehicle depends on how accurately the vehicle runs according to the driving tendency of the driver. While tendencies of the drivers vary, performance characteristics of a vehicle are set to one performance characteristic in the same type of vehicle model. Therefore, reaction of the vehicle may not coincide with the tendency of the driver.
Accordingly, when the driving tendency of the driver is detected and a shift of the vehicle is controlled to coincide with the tendency of the driver, customer satisfaction related to the driving performance may be maximized. Therefore, many methods of learning the driving tendency of the driver and controlling the shift according to the learned driving tendency have been developed.
Generally, a vehicle mode enters a sport mode from a normal mode when a short term driving tendency index is greater than a predetermined value. After that, the sport mode is released when the short term driving tendency index is less than or equal to the predetermined value, and thus, the vehicle mode returns to the normal mode. Entrance to the sport mode may be generated by a one-time rapid acceleration (short term driving tendency) or a continuous driving tendency (long term driving tendency). The sport mode should be immediately returned to the normal mode when the vehicle mode enters the sport mode according to the short term driving tendency. Further, the sport mode should be maintained when the vehicle mode enters sport mode according to the long term driving tendency.
However, the sport mode depending on the short term driving tendency may cause an acceleration complaint of the driver since the duration of the sport mode is determined to be substantially short. Moreover, the sport mode depending on the long term driving tendency may cause disharmony since the duration of the sport mode is determined to be substantially long.
The above information disclosed in this section is merely for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.